Manifestations of My Mind » Beast Within

In Which I Might Be Panicking…

admin — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 21:12:27 +0000

Yesterday, I finished edits on the screenplay adaptation of Beast Within and sent it to my second set of editors. I have four editing phases for my screenplay. I’ve already done two sets of edits and I’m freaking out. The people editing now are husband and wife and they go to my church. They’ve worked in Hollywood, so I trust them when it comes to this, but I’m still freaking out. For those of you who have read Beast Within and its sequel Beast Anew, you know that its geared towards adults, as are all of my stories. I believe in adult situations! That said, I tamed it A LOT. I took out a lot of the sex and narrowed the swearing down to only a few poignant instances. I took out ALL of the F bombs… And I gored the shit out of it! lol It’s bordering on horror. I mean, it’s about werewolves and werebeasts and fallen angels! There’s a lot of blood and guts. At least, I think there is. lol I’m nervous. It’s going to be a week or so before I hear anything back from them, so…I’m going to be on edge the whole time.

At the same time, I look forward to their notes. =)

The Beasty Movie 2 – Adapting a Book to a Script

admin — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 13:54:34 +0000

The biggest pet peeve of fans of any book-turned-movie is that the movie is never as good as the book, nor is it always accurate. There are reasons for this, but first let me say that I understand. More than I think readers do. I know how much it sucks to go into the movie expecting greatness only to leave feeling jilted. I get it. I totally get it. But there are things that have to be understood.

Number ONE:

I’m going to use Twilight as my example, since it’s one of the most controversial. In my opinion. Twilight, the book, is 115,362 words long. To non-writers, this might not sound like much, but the accepted average novel length is 50,000 words. This is how you know that you’ve written a novel, not a novella or a short. 50k words is a novel.

The average movie script is anywhere from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours. This is just my opinion once again. 90 minutes (an hour and a half) is a feature length movie, the kind that make it to the theaters.

Twilight is a 122 minute movie. That is 2 hours and 2 minutes approx.

A movie’s length can be judged, approx, but how many pages the script is. If I have a ninety page script, I have a ninety minute movie. See how that works? Now, for the fun part.

In the 122 pages it takes to write the script, you have approx. 20,000 words. Give or take. So, we’ve knocked 115,362 down to 20,000 to have a movie length that won’t have people walking out of the movie. Beast Within, my novel, is only 75k. I’m still loosing over half of my novel by turning it into a movie.

Number TWO:

Screenplays are nothing but dialogue and action. There’s no inner dialogue, there’s no emotion, there’s only what they say and what they do condensed to simple stage/set motion. If you can’t see it on the set or in the actor, don’t put it in the script.

I don’t care how awesome you are, or what your capable of, showing inner turmoil in a screenplay is next to impossible. I’m not saying the actors can’t show it, I’m saying your black words on the white paper cannot show that Luna is torn between wanting to love Gabriel and wanting to be true to her father’s memory. I can say it, but I can’t show it.

As I adapt my own novel, I’m finding scenes and secondary plots that don’t make sense in a screenplay and have to come out. It’s frustrating and a little discouraging and I have to think to myself, do I want this screenplay written this badly? The answer, of course, is yes. I do want this. I’ve always wanted this. I am going to make it happen.

Phase One of New Project – Complete

admin — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 13:26:09 +0000

A few people know that, when I started writing, I started with screenplays. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be an actress. I can’t say that desire has ever gone away, but it’s not quite as strong as it used to be. I studied screenwriting long and hard to make sure I was doing it right. It’s not like novel writing. If your format isn’t correct, you don’t get much of a second chance, if you get one at all. At some point, I don’t really remember when, I decided to switch from screenplays to novels. To say I never looked back would be a lie. I always envision my novels as movies and that will never change.

This year I’d planned to turn Beast Within into a screenplay. It wasn’t something I advertised because I didn’t know when or if it would get done. Well, I just finished. Thank GOD! It was fun, but tedious. Of course, now comes the multiple rounds of edits and revisions before I can feel confident enough to submit it to the contests. Fingers crossed that something comes of it. If not, well… I tried. lol And since Beast Within and Beast Anew are a package deal, I’ll be adapting the second one as well. Just in case they like the first.

Here’s a sneak peek at the script.

Beast Within Book Trailer

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:43:27 +0000

Since my blog tour is now filled up, I decided to post the trailer for Beast Within a little early!! I would be amiss not to post it to my blog, so! Here it is! And remember to join the event page here!!!

Bad Writer Girl – Part 1

admin — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:24:34 +0000

I labeled this part one because I tend to have “Bad Writer Girl” days more often than not. I just can’t seem to make myself WANT to write today. I have tons of edits to get through and a WIP that I wanted to have finished by Feb 1. Despite having worked on it for a month and a half, I’m still struggling to get through it. I’m at a part where my male MC and my female MC have had a falling out and, thus, are not around each other. Their dynamic when they are together is amazing. (At least I think so.) When they are apart, I struggle to write. On top of it, it’s all written from the male MC’s point of view. This is new for me. I USUALLY write from a female’s POV or from several POV’s. So, with this story, you only get his side. OF course, the sequel will be from her POV. And this novel is WAY out of my comfort zone in that it’s an erotic romance. Here’s a little taste. I’d say the rating on this one is PG-13:

***

The corners of her mouth twitched. He wanted to taste her again, those soft lips pressed against his own.

“I can see that. How do we fix this?”

“Fuck me,” he said without hesitation.

To his surprise, Mariss threw her head back and laughed. “Not going to happen.”

“I can make it very hard for you to resist.” That sounded kind of like a threat, even to him. Mariss looked at him with stern eyes.

“Did you try to kill me?” she asked. She was so serious that he couldn’t even be offended.

“No, Mariss. What would be the point of that.” He grinned, very self-aware. “I haven’t got what I want from you yet.”

Her lips set into a line and her eyes narrowed. He knew she was about to say something sarcastic.

“So, I’m nothing but a vagina with legs to you?”

“I haven’t hit that yet.”

Mariss flushed and sent a nervous look to the guard who was staring him down with cold, detached eyes. Sebastian chuckled.

***

This isn’t my norm at all. There are no aliens, no vampires, nothing supernatural or preternatural or paranormal. Yet, I’ve had sooo much fun writing this story. I know we all need a break sometimes and I have so many books that I owe reviews for. I’m trying to slowly get through those too. But then there are the edits for the books coming out next month and March… It’s a little overwhelming. Eventually, it will all pass and I’ll struggle my way through some other stuff, but right now I feel like Bad Writer Girl.

In other news, I have an AMAZING review for Scorned on Amazon. Click here to check that out. Also, Beast Within’s trailer is up at YouTube. You can catch that here. I’m working on getting it to embed, so…please be patient with me. And don’t forget that Scorned is on sale for $.99 until Feb 1. =)